


The Chelsea Hotel

by ladythistlewaite



Series: Not About The Ghosts [2]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Ghosthunting, Language, Other, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 03:58:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7742467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladythistlewaite/pseuds/ladythistlewaite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Abby and Hiltzmann get the chance to do some ghosthunting at the famous Chelsea Hotel they can hardly say no, but maybe eight nights was going to be overkill!</p><p>Pre-Canon. Some bad language (but not much)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Chelsea Hotel

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, characters are not my own
> 
> This is the second part of my aforementioned series. There may still be more pre-film bits of Holtzmann and Yates still to come. Hope you enjoy ^^

Upon reflection, Abby considered as she set up the equipment, perhaps it had been overkill to suggest an eight day long investigation into ghosts at the Chelsea hotel. Sure, it wasn’t exactly a long way from home, but it certainly felt it. It didn’t exactly look out of place, but when her and Holtzmann had arrived with a taxi filled to the roof with bags and boxes of ghost-hunting equipment, both of them felt full of trepidation. Perhaps it was the lack of welcome from the building staff, or maybe the incredible reputation the building had, but Abby somehow felt a little bit like a fish out of water.

‘You can set up in the lobby,’ the building manager had said, ‘ Here’s a list of rooms that are still occupied, don’t piss off the current residents too much, and be careful higher up in the building, we’re still doing a lot of renovation work.’ 

And that was it. They were alone. Alone in the middle of one of the most infamous hotels in New York City, and in a sprawling confused building which was probably more difficult to navigate than an Escher painting.

Abby looked around the lobby.The walls of the building were bare: all of the artwork that used to adorn the walls of the building had been taken down in 2011 and put into ‘storage’. The only artwork that remained was a papier mache woman on a swing, which hung from the ceiling of the lobby. As the light started to fade the sculpture began to look more and more creepy. Abby made a note to be sure to set up an extra camera trained entirely on it, just so she could see any movement it might make.

Between the two of them they hauled all of the equipment out of the boxes and bags that Abby had packed it into, and stood around the front desk with the building plan, drawing crosses where the equipment needed to go. So far, so good. Each of them carried a videocamera as they walked so that they could instantly capture anything that appeared. They set up experiments in different rooms ( wooden sticks balanced together in one room, a ball balanced at the top of a set of stairs with a camera trained onto it, A record player with the needle up in a further room) and fed all of the information back to the lobby downstairs, where Abby had set up a control centre, with all of the video feeds piped straight into her slightly aging computer. From there, she set up several screens - mostly borrowed both from the university computer science department at the university. It looked quite impressive if you didn’t look too closely at how flickery some of the screens looked.

By the time everything was set up , food had arrived from a nearby take-out: it wasn’t particularly warm but at least it was edible and the soup didn’t taste like dishwater. Whilst Abby ate, Holtzmann made a great show of dancing around the building singing ‘I want to break free’ (with added dance moves) to help Abby check that all of the cameras and microphones were working properly. Abby had to admit that Holtz’s Freddie Mercury impression was almost uncanny as she flicked an imaginary mic stand up into the air and strutted through the old dining hall, sliding onto her knees in front of the camera like a pro. In fact, if she cut all these videos together Abby was pretty sure it’d be a youtube hit, but she knew that Holtz wouldn’t actually like that much. For all Holtzmann loved to goof about, Abby knew that’d be a step too far.

‘Ok that’s all of the cameras set up and good to go!’ Abby called into the walkie-talkie, ‘ C’mon get back here and eat before your food goes completely cold!’

As Holtzmann wandered back she made sure to close every door behind her. Standard practice. It’d make it all the more spooky later when they wandered through the house in the pitch dark.

‘Everything ok out there?’ Abby called as Holtzmann spun into the room dramatically, still humming Queen under her breath.

‘Sure thing!’ Holtz grinned, flopping into a big armchair and grabbing a box of lukewarm noodles, stuffing them into her mouth as quickly as she could,‘Hey Abby!’ she called, her voice muffled.

‘Yup?’ Abby turned and snorted as she turned to see the noodles half in Holtz’s mouth.  
‘I’m Cthuluuuu’ Holtz mumbled around the noodles, waving her arms in an attempt to look like the lovecraftian horror.

Abby couldn’t help but laugh. It had been a couple of years since she had met Holtzmann rummaging in the dumpsters behind the psychology department, but Holtz seemed just the same: a zainy nuclear engineer who would build equipment just because she could. The woman was about as eccentric as you could get, but Abby had to admit that she was a quantifiable genius. Although it had to be said that she literally seemed to live mostly on energy drinks and pringles.

After she had finished the noodles, Holtzmann set up a table just behind Abby’s comfy chair, and had filled it with bits of junk.

‘For when it gets quiet!’ she nodded cheerily, ‘I can fix some of these babies up and sort us out with some sweet new bits of equipment that can detect and capture t3s if we find any. Besides, you never know when you’ll need a spare PSU.’

Holtzmann gestured to a smallish metal box with a load of computer cables coming out of one side of it, then carried on with whatever project it was that she was working on. 

Definitely a genius.

The first four nights of the investigation went by without a single sign of ghostly activity. Holtzmann had had a couple of run-ins with a few of the remaining residents, but for the most part it had been more silent than the grave. The take-out boxes piled up in the lobby and Abby’s pile of scary movies to watch got smaller. 

They had spent most of the daytimes asleep on various pieces of furniture in the lobby. Holtzmann had set up a blanket fort under her desk where she slept on top of the sleeping back, huddled under her overalls with a tub of pringles in her arms like a teddy bear. Abby slept on her back on one of the uncomfortable sofas, snuggled inside a sleeping bag with her feet balanced on the table. Occasionally one of the residents would wander through the lobby during the day, but none of them seemed to really mind about the women with their weird tech and even weirder sleeping patterns.

By this point, Abby had run out of experiments to run. Nothing seemed to be working, nothing seemed to be happening. Holtzmann had managed to build a new gadget for Abby based on abby’s specifications. It looked suspiciously like one of those head massager things that Abby’s cousin had bought her for Christmas last year, but it seemed to be thicker and it glowed and made a weird buzzing noise when Abby turned it on, just like everything Holtzmann seemed to build. When Abby asked what it did, all Holtz would tell her was that:

‘When it detects stuff it’ll go completely crazy.’ with a nod, before going back to working on her other new equipment.

‘Helpful,’ Abby replied with a grimace, her eyebrow raised.

They took yet another walk through the building, carefully avoiding the rooms where some of the weirder residents still lived.

‘Y’know, for a building as famous as this for being haunted, you’d think more evidence of paranormal phenomena would have come up in the last few days.’ Abby sighed as they took their usual route around the building.

‘Maybe the building work is interfering?’ Holtzmann suggested.

‘Doesn’t it normally work the other way around? Ghosts don’t normally like people messing with their stuff.’ Abby said, looking at the helpful display screen that Holtz had eventually added to the head-scratcher thingy.

Holtz shrugged and looked around, ‘ It was really divey though - maybe they’re actually happy that someone’s actually tidying the place up?’

‘Hmm. Maybe. Though a lot of the old residents are really angry about it. I’d imagine the people who used to live here would be upset too.’

‘I guess,’ Holtz shrugged back, ‘ Hey - y’know I was talking to the creepy dude on the fifth floor earlier. He said someone who lived here used to keep gators in his room. Cool huh? We might find the ghost of a gator!’

Abby smiled, ‘ Where does all your energy come from Holtz? There doesn’t seem to be anything here - and yet you haven’t complained for a second? Not even when you forgot about your food and it got cold.’

Holtz stopped and pulled up her glasses to sit on top of her head. For the first time that week her smile faded a little and Abby noticed the sadness in her eyes.

‘This is the first sleepover I’ve ever had and it’s amazing.’ her eyes looked up at a spot on the ceiling above Abby’s head, and she stared at it, ‘I’ve never really had a friend before except for blooper - the voice activated robot I made in high school. Everyone thinks I’m weird - a freak who is only interested in science.’

She swallowed, ‘ But how can they say that - ‘Only interested in science’ there’s so many branches of science. So many different ways to learn about the universe and so many different things to find out about. And the ways that the different parts of science work together - the disciplines are not distinct and discrete entities but rather parts of a whole that explain exactly how the universe works - nuclear engineering can be used to display the peculiarities of particle physics which explain the paranormal phenomena described by parapsychology. The reason for the existence of these phenomena can be explained by history. Science - it’s everything.’ She sighed, ‘ But it’s not enough. Not for anyone else. So I’ve always been alone. Until now.’

Holtzmann glanced back at Abby and her bright smile returned, ‘ It’s ok if we don’t find anything right now. Just means we might need to refine the tools a bit more and look a little harder. And anyway - this is fun.’

Abby was lost for words. Holtzmann always seemed so confident, such a happy, smiley person. She could tell that the memories of school were more painful than Holtz had said - Children were cruel and Abby knew that as well as anyone, though the thought of anyone being cruel to Holtz - childish, silly Holtz who was somehow always the coolest person in the room -it was so hard to think of.

Before Abby could say anything Holtzmann was off, bounding down the corridors calling out to ghosts and trying to provoke a reaction with even more energy than before. She even was pretending to talk Alligator in an attempt to see if it would help to get anything to come up even slightly on their equipment. Nothing.

The final few days of the investigation weren’t quite as slow as the first few. By this point the few remaining residents, eccentric as they were, had gotten used to the strange women in the lobby and on the stairs ( who were just about as weird as them). The power went out on one of the days, leaving loads of the equipment useless. A couple of the residents came downstairs to see what was happening.

After they had realised that it was once again the construction workers who had turned the power out, the residents had stopped yelling at Abby and Holtzmann and most headed back to their apartments. A few of the others had gone to yell at the construction workers. One had stayed behind.

‘They’re trying to push the last of us out.’ the elderly woman had told Abby, ‘they wanna turn the whole place into shiny condos for rich people - that’s not what the Chelsea is though.’

Abby and Holtzmann listened as she reminisced about the colourful past of the Chelsea. She told them about the fire on the fifth floor and the brutal murders. Some of it the women had known about through the quick googling they had done and the reports on paranormal websites, but some of her stories were new. Tales of eating dinner with Arthur Miller and Sid and Nancy’s massive fights, the old landlord who accepted artwork in lieu of rent, the fun of confusing the tourists and the elevator which was the slowest thing on the planet. Holtz and Abby loved every tale.

In return, Abby told some of her favourite ghost stories, and bought the old lady some take out. Between the three of them they spent a good few hours discussing the comings and goings of old residents, even discussing the alligators and monkeys which had been kept in some of the apartments. Holtz was full of questions, nailing down the exact places where different people had died and who had lived where. She also noted down on the map all of the paranormal stuff that the old woman had heard about within the building. Some of it was enough to make even Abby’s hair stand on end.

By the time night fell on the last night of the investigation, they had a plan. They had checked the weather: storms were expected.

‘The charge from the storm should whip something up at least!’ Holtzmann had bounced excitedly as she looked at the charts.

‘Yeah,’ Abby responded, ‘Let’s just hope the power doesn’t go out again - it isn’t doing the equipment much good!’

Holtz and Abby knew exactly where they wanted to look and exactly what they expected to find. They walked around with all of the kit, keeping the cameras all rolling at all times. The atmosphere was tense and full of trepidation, and as they wandered the building both of them started to notice the temperature dropping.

‘Abby,’ Holtz called into her walkie talkie, ‘ I’m on the fourth floor, it’s gettin’ creepy and cold, maybe we should search together instead?’ her voice stayed stable, but Abby noticed a note of fear in her voice.  
‘Alright Holtzmann, I’ll come find ya.’  
As she went up the stairs the hairs on Abby’s neck began to stand on end. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something in the shadows.  
‘Hello?’  
There was no reply. She held her torch high and shone it into the corner. Not even a cockroach. Quietly she continued up the stairs, her hand a little tighter on the torch.

‘Holtzmann?’ she called as she reached the fourth floor, ‘Hello?’

The shadows seemed darker now, and the rains had begun to patter against the windows at the ends of the corridors. There was no reply.

‘Holtzmann?’ she called again a little louder, walking further down the corridor.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the shadow again, darting across the hallway.

‘Who’s there?’ she called, ready to kick if it turned out to be a rat or something.

‘BOO!’ Holtzmann jumped out from behind a pillar and pounced on Abby, cackling. Abby screamed.

‘Oh my god Holtzmann! You scared me half to death!’

‘You shoulda seen your face,’ she grinned. ‘ I might have footage - look.’

As Holtzmann fiddled with her camera another shadow seemed to flick across the corridor.

‘Hey - did you see that?’ Abby asked.

‘What? You pooping your pants?’ Holtzmann sniggered, but then went quiet when she saw the serious look on Abby’s face, ‘What’d you see?’

‘A shadow - look - over there.’

The shadow seemed to quiver again, and then darted towards the end of the corridor.

‘Quick! After it!’ they sprinted through the corridors, following the darting shadow.

‘It’s heading for the ‘gator room!’ cried Holtzmann, as she took a lead on Abby, ‘Quick!’

Holtzmann had left the gator room door open so that she could watch it from a distance, but as they ran towards it the door slammed with a bang.

‘What the?!’ the two women crashed into the door with a crunch.

‘It’s locked!’ Holtz exclaimed, rattling the handle, ‘ Abby you saw - I didn't lock it - I swear! It was open!’

‘Let me.’ Abby twisted the handle. Nothing.

They looked at each other as the first flash of lightning flickered across their faces from the tiny window near the end of the corridor. There was a bang from inside the room, and they both jumped.

‘ Wait - we have a camera in there!’ Abby gasped, ‘ Let's head back downstairs and watch from there!

They rushed back downstairs - the stairs were much faster than the elevator - and puffing, found themselves in the lobby. They watched in astoundment as on the screens all sorts of things started to happen - the balls on the stairs began to all fall down as if being thrown like slinkies, then fall up the stairs again as if someone was winding the video backwards. The gator room rocked like it was a boat on a stormy sea, with all of the remaining furniture moving from one side to the other and smashing against the walls with loud banging noises. One of the cameras seemed to have been picked up by something disembodied and was dancing around like it was doing a waltz.

‘Look!’ Holtz yelled, pointing at the papier mache figure on the swing above them, which rocked backwards and forwards like a kid in the park.’

‘Oh my God Holtzmann are we getting this? Am I dreaming?’ Abby squealed, Holtzmann gazed glassy eyed at the screens.  
‘I don’t believe it. We’ve got proof. Actual proof!’ They both squealed and hugged each other, before doing the secret handshake they had perfected over the course of the week.

It was then that the power blew. Sparks flew from the computer that Abby had hooked up to all of the screens as the power supply literally blew up. The women screamed.

‘Shit.’ Abby swore as she scrambled over to the smoking wreck of a machine.  
Holtzmann made a whine of pain as she looked at the computer, before rushing to the main fusebox to try and turn the power pack on.

‘Any luck?’ Abby asked as she came back. Holtz shrugged,

‘I think it’s the whole block that’s out. I looked outside and everything is dark. As she spoke the power came back on, but the computer and the screens stayed silent as the grave.

‘ I’ll take a look at that.’ Holtzmann added, ‘ I’ll use the spare PSU I was gonna use for the proton accelerator I was thinking of building, but at least it should let us see if anything else is working?’

Abby nodded and Holtz began to work through her pile of junk on the table.

‘Aha! See! Power supply - you never know when you’ll need a spare,’ she grinned and bounced across to the computer. With the help of a few screwdrivers and her welding gloves she managed to get the computer open (‘Jeez that power supply fried alright. It’s still boiling now!’) and before too long had the new power supply attached and ready to run. She managed to work out that only one of the screens had blown up fully and that most of the screens were still working by setting Abby to work testing them all with the video cameras.

‘Moment of truth,’ She said, as she screwed the power supply in place and flicked the switch. The new power supply buzzed to life. The rest of the machine stayed dead.

‘Oh no.’ Holtz said, ‘No no no! Come back to me baby,’ she muttered, switching everything off and pulling out the hard drive. She plugged it into the laptop she had brought with her.

Abby turned and watched her, the smoking wreck of Abby’s old machine lying open on the desk, wires sticking out like so many broken arteries. Holtz loaded up her laptop and made a high pitched whine as the harddrive made a slightly terrifying juddering noise, before suddenly going silent.

Holtz turned off the machine.

‘Time of death, 3.45am’ she muttered, before slumping in her seat in front of the machine.

Abby stood still in front of her, once again speechless, ‘ Is there any way we… we might be able to save the footage?’

Holtzmann looked up with a forlorn look on her face and shook her head, ‘ It’s gone. We’ve only got what we have on the cameras. If we’re lucky we’ll have some of it on the EVP but,’ she gestured wildly, ‘ This?’ she tapped the corpse of the hard drive with her screwdriver, ‘ this is gone.’

‘Dammit, ‘ Abby whispered, ‘ but that - that was real - all of it - you saw it too right?’

Holtzmann looked up at her and grinned.

‘Every moment.’  
__

The next day they loaded everything back into a taxi and headed back to the lab at the Higgins Institute. The old woman had come downstairs to wave goodbye. When they had gone around to collect all of the equipment, Holtz had been astounded to find that the gator room seemed to be in perfect condition - it didn't look like anything was out of place - even the experimental stuff was all where she had left it on the first night.

‘I don’t understand!’ she had railed at Abby, ‘It was crashing about like in the day after tomorrow!’

‘Even worse,’ Abby complained as they waited for the taxi, ‘There’s nothing on the cameras. They seem to have wiped themselves. We’ve got nothing to show for this - nothing!’

By the time they returned to the lab and got to work on checking the equipment back in they had both, calmed down. A few of the other pieces of equipment had suffered a bit of damage, but the EVP machine had thankfully not suffered at all, as it wasn’t mains operated and the memory was stored on the machine itself. Abby loaded the data onto the machine and glanced at the screen as she listened through chunky earphones, checking all of the anomalies. All of a sudden she screamed and jumped up. Before bending over in giggles.

Holtz looked at her as if she was crazy, ‘ What the?’

‘Come on over here and take a listen,’ Abby said, winding back the tape and wiping tears from her eyes.

Holtz came over and Abby pulled out the earphones so they could both hear.

‘This is from Thursday night. Abby stated, before playing the tape. Silence for a few seconds, then all of a sudden - 

‘-oops.’ cackled Holtzmann as she heard the farting noise, before clapping and bending over with laughter, ‘ my bad.’

Abby cackled back, and patted her on the back.

‘Hey Holtz?’ she said with a smile.

‘Yeah?’ Holtz asked, looking up at Abby.

‘That was the best sleepover ever.’

Holtz grinned and silently hugged Abby, before walking back to her desk and turning on the radio.


End file.
